working [class] reading series -Oakland, California — 3 Comments
friends, this is our final reading of the series for the season, to be re-visited in may, 2012! it’s also part of the AMAZING, world-wide event known as 100thousand poets for chage (www.100tpc.org). come be with us as we gather as workers and writers, in solidarity with writers across the world! SO EXCITING! and last, but not least, we’ll have cake and an afterparty to help celebrate 2 birthdays: my beloved co-curator of this series, amber dipietra, and one of our readers that night, the lovely sylvia eugenia! in short: don’t miss it!
featured reader/workers:
sylvia eugenia (birthday girl!)
tai amri (just moved back to the bay from philly!)
rebecca caridad (all the way from boulder, CO!)
and
denise leto (who we LOVE!)
as always, we will provide free hotdogs (and veggie dogs) if you bring the sides, and don’t forget to BYOB.
doors at 7:30, reading starts at 8:30
702 w. macarthur blvd
oakland, ca
94609
bios:
SylviaEugenia kakassy; Feral Femme, Continuously living through and for her writing of now 29 years of life, she is sorting through the good and bad pain embedded in the knotted muscles of her body’s memory. From the below Ventura Blvd in the San Fernanado Valley she is an expert in making something out of nothing for dinner and every other occasion, still believeing in help of San Pasqual to find whatever she has lost along with the properties of ” Sana sana culito de rana…”to work through everyday pain . She is currently creating on a new collection of poems entitled “leftovers” as well as romancing she into falling in love with ella.
tai amri is an african american, quaker, christian, orisha worshipping, magic loving, curious, ally, poet, preacher, teacher, from the jersey side of philadelphia. he is interested in the intersection of spirituality and poetry (and in fact in the intersection of spirituality and sexuality, spirituality and social justice, spirituality and equal rights, spirituality and anarchy, spirituality and oppression and spirituality and everything else in the world). he is currently working at tending little (mostly) brown and black children/sprouts in east oakland’s vastly underresourced public after school programs and co-pastoring a small (hopefully growing), radically inclusive church in oaktown. even though he’s from philly, he loves most things oaklandish and sees the whole city as his congregation. most of his work is geared towards waking the listener up by exposing third eyes and heart chakras and the ways that oppression seeks to devour our lives with our aid. he has been published and edited journals whose names seem irrelevant at the moment and will be reading from his ancient book of poems of vastly irreverent dark spiritual matters and enlightened profanity. please enter. one love.
Rebecca Caridad holds a BA in Writing from Naropa University in Boulder, CO. She’s a leasing agent by day and a crafter, writer, blogger, and an Etsy business owner (Manzanita) by night. She reads fancy stuff like The Twilight Series, haha, just kidding, except not really:( Her faves are Gertrude Stein, Octavio Paz, Milan Kundera, & Cummings. She lives in a small trailer home with a lovely garden, an ungodly amount of yarn and books, two adorable poodles, and her beloved fiance’. It’s a good life. Check out her many talents at http://www.rebeccacaridad.com/.
Denise Leto is a poet, writer, activist and Senior Editor at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has appeared in Puerto del Sol; Aufgabe; Xantippe; Wolf Magazine; MELUS: The Journal of Multi-Ethnic Literature in the US and is forthcoming in Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability and Chain Link Books. She was guest editor for Sinister Wisdom, Artist in Residence at Djerassi, and a Fellow for the University of Michigan’s Symposium, “Movement, Somatics and Writing.” A collaborative chapbook with Amber DiPietra, Waveform, is just out from Kenning Editions. She is currently working on a docu-book, Day Jobs: What Poets, Writers, and Artists Do for a Living and, in her spare time, the foreclosure of big banks.
:working [class] reading series
bring a covered dish or beverage. bring some pomes or almost poems. bring your curiosity about poetry, your thoughts on work or class or access. also, think christmas lights, driveway, old couches, kids and dogs, barbeque, after party.
:8pm at michelle puckett’s house
:702 w. macarthur blvd
:oakland, ca
with this series we aim to soften things up. we are thinking of people who interest us and then asking them what poems or thoughts they might have about work, bodies at work, working class perspectives on the world, stories of capitalism, commonality, and the millions of offshoots poetry allows us to consider given these things. we want to mix scenes and get comfie. we want hot dogs.
what we are looking for:
1. any work, on any topic, by people who identify as raised-poor or working class.
2. work from people from other classes, granted it considers deeply the plight and dignity of working people and casts them centrally in the writing.
3. also, we want to facilitate a short dialogue with a worker – most often one who does not identify as a “writer” – each month. we will look at poetics and the work of words through a loose lens of labor and the body that performs it.
it is important to say that this series consciously considers physical bodies. the venue, a garage, will have space heaters and blankets and fans if oakland nights get hot. it is also completely wheelchair accessible, though we really regret to say that bathrooms are upstairs. assistance will be provided to anyone who needs it and there is a bathroom at the gas station across the street and at macarthur BART.
we think just by talking about couches and kids and bathrooms we are making for a new tone as far as reading series go. we hope you’ll join us. hot dogs will be provided but BYOB.
friends, this is our final reading of the series for the season, to be re-visited in may, 2012! it’s also part of the AMAZING, world-wide event known as 100thousand poets for chage (www.100tpc.org). come be with us as we gather as workers and writers, in solidarity with writers across the world! SO EXCITING! and last, but not least, we’ll have cake and an afterparty to help celebrate 2 birthdays: my beloved co-curator of this series, amber dipietra, and one of our readers that night, the lovely sylvia eugenia! in short: don’t miss it!
featured reader/workers:
sylvia eugenia (birthday girl!)
tai amri (just moved back to the bay from philly!)
rebecca caridad (all the way from boulder, CO!)
and
denise leto (who we LOVE!)
as always, we will provide free hotdogs (and veggie dogs) if you bring the sides, and don’t forget to BYOB.
doors at 7:30, reading starts at 8:30
702 w. macarthur blvd
oakland, ca
94609
bios:
SylviaEugenia kakassy; Feral Femme, Continuously living through and for her writing of now 29 years of life, she is sorting through the good and bad pain embedded in the knotted muscles of her body’s memory. From the below Ventura Blvd in the San Fernanado Valley she is an expert in making something out of nothing for dinner and every other occasion, still believeing in help of San Pasqual to find whatever she has lost along with the properties of ” Sana sana culito de rana…”to work through everyday pain . She is currently creating on a new collection of poems entitled “leftovers” as well as romancing she into falling in love with ella.
tai amri is an african american, quaker, christian, orisha worshipping, magic loving, curious, ally, poet, preacher, teacher, from the jersey side of philadelphia. he is interested in the intersection of spirituality and poetry (and in fact in the intersection of spirituality and sexuality, spirituality and social justice, spirituality and equal rights, spirituality and anarchy, spirituality and oppression and spirituality and everything else in the world). he is currently working at tending little (mostly) brown and black children/sprouts in east oakland’s vastly underresourced public after school programs and co-pastoring a small (hopefully growing), radically inclusive church in oaktown. even though he’s from philly, he loves most things oaklandish and sees the whole city as his congregation. most of his work is geared towards waking the listener up by exposing third eyes and heart chakras and the ways that oppression seeks to devour our lives with our aid. he has been published and edited journals whose names seem irrelevant at the moment and will be reading from his ancient book of poems of vastly irreverent dark spiritual matters and enlightened profanity. please enter. one love.
Rebecca Caridad holds a BA in Writing from Naropa University in Boulder, CO. She’s a leasing agent by day and a crafter, writer, blogger, and an Etsy business owner (Manzanita) by night. She reads fancy stuff like The Twilight Series, haha, just kidding, except not really:( Her faves are Gertrude Stein, Octavio Paz, Milan Kundera, & Cummings. She lives in a small trailer home with a lovely garden, an ungodly amount of yarn and books, two adorable poodles, and her beloved fiance’. It’s a good life. Check out her many talents at http://www.rebeccacaridad.com/.
Denise Leto is a poet, writer, activist and Senior Editor at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has appeared in Puerto del Sol; Aufgabe; Xantippe; Wolf Magazine; MELUS: The Journal of Multi-Ethnic Literature in the US and is forthcoming in Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability and Chain Link Books. She was guest editor for Sinister Wisdom, Artist in Residence at Djerassi, and a Fellow for the University of Michigan’s Symposium, “Movement, Somatics and Writing.” A collaborative chapbook with Amber DiPietra, Waveform, is just out from Kenning Editions. She is currently working on a docu-book, Day Jobs: What Poets, Writers, and Artists Do for a Living and, in her spare time, the foreclosure of big banks.
:working [class] reading series
bring a covered dish or beverage. bring some pomes or almost poems. bring your curiosity about poetry, your thoughts on work or class or access. also, think christmas lights, driveway, old couches, kids and dogs, barbeque, after party.
:8pm at michelle puckett’s house
:702 w. macarthur blvd
:oakland, ca
with this series we aim to soften things up. we are thinking of people who interest us and then asking them what poems or thoughts they might have about work, bodies at work, working class perspectives on the world, stories of capitalism, commonality, and the millions of offshoots poetry allows us to consider given these things. we want to mix scenes and get comfie. we want hot dogs.
what we are looking for:
1. any work, on any topic, by people who identify as raised-poor or working class.
2. work from people from other classes, granted it considers deeply the plight and dignity of working people and casts them centrally in the writing.
3. also, we want to facilitate a short dialogue with a worker – most often one who does not identify as a “writer” – each month. we will look at poetics and the work of words through a loose lens of labor and the body that performs it.
it is important to say that this series consciously considers physical bodies. the venue, a garage, will have space heaters and blankets and fans if oakland nights get hot. it is also completely wheelchair accessible, though we really regret to say that bathrooms are upstairs. assistance will be provided to anyone who needs it and there is a bathroom at the gas station across the street and at macarthur BART.
we think just by talking about couches and kids and bathrooms we are making for a new tone as far as reading series go. we hope you’ll join us. hot dogs will be provided but BYOB.
:michelle puckett & amber dipietra
working.class.reading@gmail.com
Thanks to all who came out to the last :working class reading series of the summer, as part of 100TPC. Visit my blog for a recap and the audio from the evening. Videos and photos coming soon. http://adipietra.blogspot.com/2011/09/working-class-reading-series-september.html